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| Ms. Joyce Ohenewaa Kwapong advocating for peace at St Thomas Aquinas SHS |
WE HAVE ONE GHANA!! WE DON'T WANT TO BE REFUGEES!!
You and I may not know the value of peace until we have been
handed guns to shoot our own mothers and fathers.
We may not know the worth of being peaceful until we see our
young girls, our little sisters, the children of tomorrow, our future leaders,
being "war raped" and forcefully impregnated, with Sexually
Transmitted Diseases on the rampant and death tolls reaching a crescendo.
We may not know what peace really is, until we starve as
food and thirst as water.
We may not see the need to be peaceful until an entire
family who once had more than enough to eat and waste, can no more afford a cup
of rice nor piece of bread to nibble.
Oh yes! Not until hunger becomes the children's bread and
tears their water, we may not see the essence of being peaceful.
Today, we may overlook what it means to be a peaceful
nation, because we may not have seen human arms being slain in the name of
"short and long sleeves"
We may not value peace today because we have not experienced
gruesome moments where individuals have to trample upon dead bodies of family
members, as they flee for their dear lives.
We have never encountered the trauma underlying leaving
one's place of abode to a lone man's land as refugees running from the rains of
bullets and from the comfort of one's bed to live under tents.
Many countries, with the likes of Rwanda, South Sudan,
Liberia, Somalia, Angola, Burundi, have had an eyesore encounter of war,
deaths, destruction, disabilities, pollution, psychological stress related to
war, to mention but few.
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| Team of speakers for the peace-advocacy campaign tour |
These great countries were once as peaceful as Ghana, but
today, they are being used as cautionary tales.
Why???
This question is left to you and I to answer.
If today, Ghana is enjoying peace and tranquility, we ought
to see it as a privilege which we must fearfully and jealously protect.
We must task ourselves with the responsibility of
maintaining the peace we have as a nation.
We must use our positive strengths to maintain the peace of
our land than to spend it in salvaging the leftovers after the nation is
plunged in war.
Let us not wait to ran out of our own land seeking for
refuge, like animals being frightened and chased away whilst grazing on another
man's land.
It is for the peace of this nation and the desire not to see
Ghana encounter such atrocities, that a team of student leaders and activists
have come together to go on a peace-advocacy campaign tour dubbed "The
need for violent free election"
A campaign tour spearheaded by the Face of GUPS; Shemimah
Dapilah and assisted by various student leaders and activists in the persons of Barrack
Dodoo, E.K.D Oppong, Tunde Awosika, and myself, Joyce Ohenewaa Kwapong.
As an activist for women and children, I cannot keep silent
but to advocate for the peace of Ghana because when a nation is "peace
wrecked", women and children suffer most.
The peace of Ghana is my peace, your peace and the peace of
generations unborn.
Ghana needs peace and not to be left in pieces.
Be a peace magnet!
Be an agent of peace!
